


Fiordaliso

by glowstojevskij



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Florist Harry, Flower Language, Fluff, Introspection, M/M, Photographer Louis, because obviously, flower shop au, not sure this deserved a tag but you know
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-02
Updated: 2016-09-07
Packaged: 2018-08-12 14:51:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7938733
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glowstojevskij/pseuds/glowstojevskij
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>“So, I think I’ll go for a branch of these after all. Fleur-de-lis, is it?” he says awkwardly.</i>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <i>“A branch,” Harry considers him with a smug look and a sarcastic note in his voice.</i>
</p><p> </p><p><i>“Err. A bunch?” hazards Louis, a flush climbing his neck.</i><br/><br/>-</p><p>Harry has a flower shop and a sorrow and Louis likes floriography and taking photographs.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. fleur-de-lis

**Author's Note:**

> So, because I have a fic in the making what do I do? I start another one of course.  
> Thing is, I very much like the idea of Harry and flower language and I really feel Louis in this with all his internal conflicts, so I couldn't just abandon the idea. Hopefully this sudden writing productivity will last. Who knows.  
> I cannot thank [hollytabatha](http://archiveofourown.org/users/hollytabatha) enough for being the quickest most helpful beta ever, I'm blessed.

 

Louis walks hastily through the narrow streets of the city centre. His shoulder bag full of books keeps hitting his side and will probably leave a nasty and purple bruise, while the cup of coffee he is holding in order to keep his hands vaguely warm threatens to spill its contents all over him with every single step he takes.

Louis is always in a hurry, and he is always in a hurry because he is always late.

It is never his fault, though.

Or maybe it is, because even now, despite the extreme lateness, he can’t help suddenly coming to a halt in front of an old flower shop just to contemplate it in every detail, at the risk of being run over by a young couple walking behind him.

Okay, perhaps he is always late because he gets distracted a lot.

It’s just. This town has all these little gems of buildings and hidden shops that nobody seems to ever notice, and Louis’ eyes feel always so sorry because they love art and nice things and quirky stuff, and he thinks it’s a real pity they don’t get the recognition they actually deserve.

The sign of the shop is what has his attention first. It is one of those wooden signs, hanging from an iron bar through some rusty chains. It’s decayed, with a beauty that the decades cancelled, faded, just like the writing, illegible under a quilt of dust and soot.

Then there is the door. It’s dark green, with these small and opaque glass windows and a round handle of a dirty gold colour. The actual shop window is quite wide but almost empty. The only forms of life featuring in it are a couple of anonymous geraniums and some sickly cacti covered in spider webs and arranged with no care, only to create a more woebegone sight than if it were completely empty.

In moments like these the camera constantly hanging from his neck feels heavier, as if it acquired its own meaningfulness, its own awareness, and Louis _feels_ her and understands that he must take a picture, because it’s a sort of sign, it is the combination of a moment in which everything is twistedly and complexly perfect. But he must catch it soon, because each alteration, even the most imperceptible, could spoil it and ruin it forever, and Louis would miss it for good.

He takes a picture.

He doesn’t look at it right away, though, because he never does.

He prefers to do it once he gets home, once he is sitting in front of his laptop with the usual cup of tea to warm his hands and somewhat defy the cold of his flat, which is actually a meagre and tiny garret under the roof more than a flat.

He likes to do it then, and scour and review all the photographs he has taken during the day, to see if some are worth developing. They almost never are. Most times he just slams the screen of his laptop shut and ends up going to bed more frustrated than ever.

Anyway, he would really love to take some pictures of the inside of the building now, too, only the little shop seems closed.

Louis figured.

It _must_ be closed, it’s like a prerogative of this kind of shops, the kind of shops that nobody notices, that you pass by, eyes fixated on the ground, without diverting the attention from your own thoughts or from the person you’re talking with while you stroll in the street, and the idea of stopping or let alone trying to get inside doesn’t even brush your mind, because you _know_ this kind of shops are always close and forsaken.

That’s exactly why Louis in no second has his hand on the handle, and pushes a bit with his body, sure he will be met with the opposition of a lock.

Instead, to his surprise, the door opens with a screeching sound.

The inside of the shop is just like Louis pictured it. Cold. Deserted. And perfect.

The floor made of a dark wood is covered in dead leaves and wilting petals. Vases with different varieties of flowers are aligned on small and pretty tables varnished in white, scattered in the room with no particular criteria.

In a corner, piled one over another, are some ceramic pots that look like they’ve been put there and never moved since, a bunch of branches and discarded underbrush and a lopsided small tree with flowers of the matte colour of a face powder.

It feels like time has wrapped as a cape this poky place, cruelly, for sure, but also in a poetic and dreamlike way. The dust gently covers every single surface, in an attempt to preserve and protect it, save for the flowers, that look like they have been picked up in that very moment.

Louis gets closer to one of the vases that houses light purple flowers with darker pistils. They could be forget-me-not, but he’s not quite sure.

At his mum’s, back home, they actually have a garden, but Louis has never been good at remembering the names of the flowers. For his mother was enough to know that, however they were called, he wasn’t allowed to crush them with the football when he was playing.

He takes another picture.

He keeps nosing around, passing the row of flower vases and reaching the window, casting sidelong glances to the people walking in the streets. He stands there, still, feeling like he has been given a privileged position that allows him to be apart from the course of this cold day of January, from the flowing of time, of the most futile and recurring moments of life.

Even the people outside flow. They speak on the phone, they hurry to reach unknown places, they talk animatedly, while Louis is there, in a case made of plate glass that the world has forgotten and that time has encompassed, perhaps with too much eagerness, until crushing it.

There’s an abrupt noise then, to distract him from his existential thoughts.

Startled—and a bit scared, but that’s for nobody to know—he turns towards the corner behind the counter where the creaking sound seemed to come from, only to realise that there is actually somebody in the shop.

He doesn’t know how he managed not to notice that little old lady, wrapped in a wool shawl and sitting on a rocking chair that was now moving steadily with increasing speed.

“Margaret!” She cries, taking Louis aback. She opens her eyes, which are glaucous and watery, staring in the empty, and screams loud, for what she can, twisting and fiddling on the chair and growing agitated.

“I—I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to disturb, I’ll—“ tries Louis, tone of voice a bit distraught, as he carefully takes one step back. He is a bit unsettled, but he can’t stop watching her, captivated.

Her skin is pale, the face gaunt and sunken in around the eyes. She has creases that surround the mouth, and her hair, once presumably blonde are turning into a spectral white. Despite everything, Louis figures that in the past she must have been a gorgeous and attractive woman. There is something royal in her stance, thin eyebrows frame a fierce expression, now upset by something, probably by Louis himself, the perfect line of her nose lends her a gracious look, just like the hands, interlaced around a silver necklace.

“Margaret!” she cries again, fighting the raucous voice almost with rage, trembling, and Louis fears she will explode right there in front of him, shattering into a million of minuscule pieces.

The blanket covering her legs falls on the ground. Louis, tentative and rather unsure, gets close to her with prudence, but the woman seems not to notice anyway. She keeps rocking back and forth with inertia, glaze creepily fixated past the window, looking like she can’t really see. She looks unreal, lightened by the sun shines that seep through the glass and allow a warmth only seemingly reassuring.

It’s always stronger than him.

Louis takes a picture.

Then he gets even closer, picks the blanket up from the floor and fixes it on the woman’s legs with care.

Once again she doesn’t notice, or if she does she doesn’t acknowledge so.

“Do you need this Margaret person?” asks Louis softly, now completely enraptured and intrigued by the old lady’s odd behaviour. He places a hand on her shoulder and bends to get his ear next to her mouth, to catch an answer that never comes.

Close like this, he can feel that the woman smells of dust and incense, like those books stowed away under the rooftops and opened after decades, with yellowed pages, rough under the touch, with faded ink and some rough scrape on the cover, custodians of adventures they are not able to narrate.

“Maybe you can tell me where I can find her? I could have a look around for you?” tries again Louis, not less hopeful of hearing her speaking again.

“She won’t answer.”

Louis jumps, once again startled, anchoring himself at the camera in his hands. The woman hadn’t spoken.

He turns, scared, and sees that the voice belongs to a boy, who is leaning against the jamb of the door on the other side of the counter. His mouth is pressed into an indecipherable grimace, arms crossed on his chest, a burgundy apron secured around his waist, unruly curls that fall around his young face.

Eyes the same colour as the woman’s , but of a sparklier and vivider green, were now staring at Louis, in a mixture of curiosity and skepticism.

The boy seems torn, but decides to ignore Louis to give his attention to the woman, getting close to her. He has another heavy patterned wool shawl in his hands and carefully puts it around her shoulders, wrapping her tightly and fitting the hems under her frail legs, so that it won’t slip away; then he delicately places a soft kiss on her head.

“It’s really cold in here,” says the boy, raspily addressing Louis, almost as if he feels the need to justify himself. Louis nods his head eagerly, keeping still, unmoving, in await.

Louis has always been a great observer. This is why he picked photography at university, after sifting through and then excluding quickly all the other options that his mum or his teachers kept suggesting.

After all, taking photos was the only thing he thought he was good at, or at least adept to, and he wasn’t even sure of it.

He has never been one with a great tendency to follow rules, to study when due, to submit his projects on time, and that’s why he liked photography, because he could follow his own rule, which was no rules at all.

The choice of a college of the arts seemed the best option he could go for. He thought he could be free, for once, of doing him, of expressing himself or not doing it at all, and that he would have found somebody who understood him, or if he didn’t, it wouldn’t have mattered anyway, because all the other people would have had a soul akin to his and would get that.

 _Instead,_ the course was revealing itself to be more draining and hard than expected. There were no encouraging and compliant teachers who spurred him to expose his talent, or trips into the nature to snag its essence with the camera, but rather long and boring classes on techniques and physics and photo shoots to submit at the end of term.

Despite all, he still liked it, although it wasn’t as he expected it, because at least he got to have a camera in his hands all the time. And that was the only thing that reassured him, that made him feel at his place, that allowed him to look at things, at people, without feeling in subjection, without giving up his essence, without closing himself into his own little world, without avoiding, hiding, escaping, because the rest was too scary.

Fact is, growing up, he saw people around him figuring themselves out and realising stuff, while he never got to acquire that self-confidence. But maybe now, he thinks, he has found his path. Because the only thing he knows is that when he hears the shutter click of the flash going off he feels like doing the right thing, for once. Something he can’t mess up, like he did with school, with his friends back home, with his mum, with his short yet unsettled life. He takes photographs, and like that he staggers the seconds, the ones of tension, the ones of pleasure, the ones of shyness, the ones of sadness. He traps them, he exorcises them, then he looks away from the lens and the feeling doesn’t disappear, it floats in front of him, ethereal, and everything becomes clearer.

Everything becomes better if he looks at it through his camera.

He called her Patti, like Patti Smith, because he likes to have her music on when he develops his photos.

As Louis stays there keeping silent, the curly boy goes back behind the counter, fetches a broom and starts to swipe the dry leaves from the floor, amassing them in a corner.

Louis wants to photograph him so, so bad. He wants to capture that focused and boyish expression, wants to capture that lock of hair that has fallen over his eyes, wants to capture the contrast creating between the listless green of the leaves and the flaming one of his eyes.

Louis looks better at him, as to figure him out, noticing the name _Harry_ embroidered on the pocket of the burgundy apron. His finger dawdles hesitantly on the button of the camera.

He breaths in, and then, bravely, he takes a picture.

The boy looks up, a bit confused, a bit disgruntled, scrunching his nose.

“How can I help you?” he asks, clearing his throat. His tone of voice is casual, as if he didn’t notice Louis’ sneakily taking the picture. He was now leaning on the broomstick, staring at Louis straight in the eyes, making him feel quite stupid of standing there, with his camera around the neck, so glaringly guilty.

“Oh I was just— _she.”_ Stutters Louis, coughing awkwardly. “She was looking for Margaret. Or at least I think so,” he says, motioning at the old woman on the rocking chair.

The young boy— _Harry—_ moves his attention to the lady, and his mouth suddenly becomes a thin window, almost as a subconscious reflex, and Louis thinks he sees a flash of sadness crossing his face, but it’s soon gone so he’s not really sure.

Harry goes back to focus on him then, resting a hand on his own hip.

“Sorry? Did you need anything in particular?” he repeats, motioning at the flowers.

Louis frowns and incredulous locks eyes with Harry, wondering if he didn’t hear him at all. But the look on the boy’s face is so bold, almost brazen, that has Louis _knowing_ and questioning why he is deliberately ignoring Louis’ words.

“No, listen mate, she—come on, she needs this Margaret!” explains Louis, starting to lose his patience.

Harry stares at him for what feel like days, and then does the last thing Louis was expecting and sighs loudly. He turns to the woman, who has her eyes closed now and looks peacefully asleep. Her thin and weak lips are crooked into an imperceptible smile and the rocking chair lulls her softly with the remainder movement of the spasms that every so often still start her.

A smile, small and private, mirroring the woman’s one, blooms on Harry’s lips. “Yeah,” he whispers. “Yeah, I think Margaret is back here now,” he comments, and Louis doesn’t know what to say when he gets the boy’s attention back, so he just blinks at him in confusion.

“So, why are you here again?” asks Harry, tilting his head to the side.

“I just—“

 _I don’t know_ thinks Louis, still trying to understand what is going on here, as he moves his gaze from Harry to the woman. He settles on Harry in the end, he takes him in, and for a moment he wants to tell him all the story about the shops with empty windows and dusty signs, that he was looking for some inspiration for a project he has to do for uni, that every fucking time he starts to wander about, looking for a subject he ends up losing himself in places that he doesn’t even know where or how or _why_.

Maybe it’s just the photographer’s knack. Or maybe he’s just a plain idiot, but nobody tells him, and so he continues to fill that stupid portfolio and do researches on the use of light during Impressionism, thinking he knows what he is doing.

For a moment he also thinks he should get out, leave this place and cut this odd visit off before he can embarrass himself further. But there’s something that tells him to stay, and that’s why he approaches a vase of flowers and improvises shamelessly.

“These.”

“Pardon?” Harry frowns, getting close to Louis.

“These,” says again Louis, pointing at the purple flowers he photographed when he got in. “What flowers are these?” he asks screechingly.

“Fleur-de-lises,” answers Harry, and his mouth curls softly and velvety around those words and it makes Louis shiver. Louis looks up and Harry has his eyebrows pulled together, but at least he lost that diffidence in the voice that made Louis so uncomfortable.

“I thought they were forget-me-not,” murmurs Louis absentmindedly, widening his eyes.

Harry presses his lips together as if he was fighting not to answer, and then he even giggles.

He _giggles._

Harry giggles and laughs, throwing his head back, and Louis did that. Harry giggles and it is the most beautiful sound ever, and has Louis smiling a bit, because it’s like something had been pushing to escape Harry’s chest for too long and it sounds beautiful but also liberating and maybe he’s not made of ice after all.

“Forget-me-not,” smiles Harry, eyes crinkling with myrth. “Nice. It’s not a flower you would usually find in a flower shop. It’s wild you know, and a bit pretentious. In the concept, I mean. Although,” he brushes his fingers against a branch of light blue flowers with round petals, “I happen to really like them. The blue ones. My favourites,” he specifies.

He snaps a small branch and offers it to Louis, who looks back at him a bit dazed, but accepting it all the same. They stay there quietly, until Louis has stared at Harry, at the flowers and at the ground for too long, and the silence starts to be uncomfortable.

“So,” he whispers, and then clears his throat.

“So,” smiles Harry boldly.

“So, I think I’ll go for a branch of these after all. Fleur-de-lis, is it?” he says awkwardly.

Louis had never been in a flower shop before. Not even to gift his first little girlfriend for Valentine’s day. It’s quite sad, he knows. He was the one, as a child, to mischievously uproot the first red flower from the neighbour’s flowerbeds and give it to his mum for Mum’s day, with a card made of course of paper scrapped from the English notebook. Once he even tried to make her some cookies shaped like hearts with his sisters, but the result was so disgraceful that his mum banned him from the kitchen forever.

“A branch,” Harry considers him with a smug look and a sarcastic note in his voice.

“Ugh. A bunch?” hazards Louis, a flush climbing his neck.

Harry smiles happily for the third time, without trying to hide it, and takes some flowers from the vase, to lay them carefully on the counter.

“A _bouquet,_ ” he says then, looking briefly at Louis before fetching some florist scissors from under the counter and fumbling with a green tape that he wraps around the stems to keep the flowers together. He trims some leaves and then with a firm movement cuts up the too long stems.

“I don’t really like putting frills with the flowers, but if you fancy something, like, if it’s for some special occasion maybe I can—“

“No,” says hurriedly Louis. He thinks of his messy one bedroom flat under the rooftop of a building quite close to the university. Tonight he will go back there, stopping to get some takeaway for dinner first, then he will eat on his own, looking through the pictures, start working on that essay on the role of shades in photography, most probably falling asleep on the desk in the process, forgetting altogether about the flowers that he bought just for the sake of staying in the shop and talking to Harry a bit more, really, flowers that he would find on their way to wilting the day after, so that their unhealthy sight would nauseate him, spurring him to throw them away.

“No, it’s ok. Nothing special at all.”

Harry nods understandingly, wrapping the flowers in some newspaper, so that the residual water won’t drip all over. “Alright.”

Louis fishes some coins from the pocket of his coat and gives them to Harry, taking the bunch of flowers. He looks around once again, struggling to find something else to say, but then shakes his head in surrender and makes his way towards the door.

“Wait!”

Louis stops, one foot already outside, and turns hopefully towards Harry.

He doesn’t want to leave.

“Never leave them without water.”

Louis frowns. “What?”

He really doesn’t want to leave.

Harry smiles openly, motioning at the bouquet. “I throwed some buds in there. Put them in the water so they will blossom and last more,” he says confidently.

Louis looks at the flowers too, nodding stupidly as Harry waves cutely at him and his cheeks flush.

He really doesn’t want to leave.

 

He leaves.


	2. Angelica

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So the story finally starts! I once again have to thank my [beta](http://archiveofourown.org/users/hollytabatha) for being the best.

“Tomlinson?”

Louis is lazily splayed on the desk, head resting on his arm, one eye half-lidded and blankly staring at the teaching post where Mrs. Pearce, the Art History lecturer, is pontificating about some details of a Manet painting, the other far more interested in staring at whatever is going on outside the window.

It’s raining. The droplets brought by this light storm shatter themselves against the fogged glass and then slide slowly down, creating a distorted and unfocused view of the yard just outside, enough for Louis to move his attention from that deadly dull class.

It’s not just him, to be fair. The general atmosphere is one of a shared and complete drowsiness. Winter is dwindling, but it’s still cold enough to keep the heating on, and the whole class is falling into the comfortable and muffled cosiness of Mrs. Pearce’s room.

By all means, her lectures are the least enjoyable part of the whole university thing, but he must attend them in order to pass the year, although not even with all the willpower he can muster would he be able to listen to that litany for more than five consecutive minutes.

Every single time he tries to focus he ends up distracted and thinking of something entirely different without even realising.

He must be sporting quite the absent-minded expression though- more absent-minded than usual- , because of all the bored people, of course the old teacher decides to pick on him.

“Tomlinson!” she calls. “Did you want to tell us something about it?”

Bloody hell. He wasn’t even _talking._

Louis lifts his head in a jolt and glances around. Half of the class is sympathetically staring back at him, while the other half is too busy keeping their eyes subtly down, praying not to meet the stinging one of Mrs. Pearce. Probably not even the kids in the first row of chairs have a vague idea of what she was on about, but of course she had to call out Louis.

“Uhm,” he tries to swallow past the lump in his throat, “about what?” he squawks courageously.

The teacher sighs dramatically as to underline how yes, she became inured with students like Louis, they are all made with the same mould, and no, she has no intention on letting him get away with that. They all kind of suspect she has too much fun in torturing them.

“About the introduction of photography in painting of course!” she exclaims indignantly, and then points at a projection of Manet’s _Bar aux Folies Bergère_ standing out on the wall behind her.

Louis stares at it half-closing his eyes, as if feigning a focused grimace could convince her he was actually listening. He thinks he should just apologise and try to at least pretend he cares about what she has to say, but that wouldn’t be something _Louis_ does.

So, although he has no idea of what she was talking about, he opens his mouth, because clearly he cannot not be impulsive for once in his life.

“I think,” he breathes in deeply, “that it was a great help for painters, yeah? It could save them all these hours spent outside in the same place to catch a single shot, and sometimes they had to go there multiple times to catch the right light and stuff, while with the advent of photography they could just take a picture and use it for their paintings, right?”

“So you just don’t care about the disappearing of painting _en plein air_ Mr. Tomlinson?” she asks outraged.

“And you just don’t care about the fact that without photography painters would have been forced to keep painting portraits on commission to earn enough to survive, keep dullily duplicating reality and blocking the language, the creative process, what they had inside, in the heart, in the blood, from head to the tips of the fingers but not beyond! Not to the brush, because everything that is weird and out of normality or reality must be sidelined and denigrated! Do you think we would have had what came next anyway?”

Louis was never good at putting together linear speeches, it is a great flaw of his. Because when he really needs to express with passion what he has at heart, he just spits it all out haphazardly, and thanks to the urgency he doesn’t think through what he is about to say, it is on his interlocutor to try and retrace what he really meant, if they can, if they care.

Louis finds that nobody really tries, nobody really cares.

“Probably,” backfires Mrs. Pearce, taking one step forward. “It was the bravery in the choices, in not listening to criticism, until the common vision finally changed. Think of Decadentism, Tomlinson!”

“But don’t you ever think of _why_ it did change?” now Louis feels hot all over, in the attempt of making his point clear. “How would have they managed to change it if they were spending their time bending to the fits of some aristocrat who wanted himself more slim in a family portrait? Photography helped them earn money through what they loved to do, while at the same time letting them actually _do_ it. Because they didn’t need to bend to what was expected, a photograph was way faster and cheaper than a portrait. Do you think a customer would have spent more easily hundreds of pounds on a portrait or a handful on a picture? Personally I think of a painter who can finally say fuck off to commissioners and say, fine, I’ll paint what I want, what I feel, what I experience, and I’ll do it in my own way and-- “

“So,” cuts him off Mrs. Pearce, “you maintain that the whole pre-modern art wasn’t expression of one’s soul?”

Louis’ eyebrows knit together, and he rolls his eyes.

“I don’t. And you said it yourself, right? I just think it was a representation sometimes too conditioned by...other stuff. And that it is not a casualty that the most soul captivating art came only after the first half of the eighteenth century. Sure, the Renaissance was great art, I love it, but it wasn’t as conceptual. You can’t deny that.”

“And don’t you ever think, Mr. Tomlinson, that with photography we wouldn't have Manet painting Monet who paints on his floating atelier on the river with his wife, just because Monet, instead of staying all these hours, as you like to put it, outside, could just take a picture and then work on it in his studio? Where’s the connection with nature, with senses, where’s art in its purest form? In the shutter click of a camera?”

Louis looks at her with the air of someone who’s about to lose their patience, his cheeks redden a bit, but with fervor and not embarrassment.

“But we _did have_ Manet painting Monet,” he says wryly, “and besides, you’re discrediting photography, but we could have had Manet photographing Monet photographing the Seine at night! Art didn’t vanish, it just transformed into something different but the same, because it’s always the same in the eyes of those who can grasp it. It’s universal, yes, but not in the literal sense.You are deprecating the possibility to catch one moment, even the most transient and inconsequential, in the movement of a finger and you don’t think photography is art. But art is not only what you can find in the book of Art History you studied from in the Stone Age.”

The class falls deadly silent at that, and Louis scrunches his nose expectantly and fixes his fringe, a gesture of the times in which he is nervously conscious of having pushed too far.

If the answer he expects is a counter back to his words, what he gets makes him want to be swallowed whole by the ground.

“And if you think it is art, Mr. Tomlinson,” backfires the woman with venom, fetching from her desk a red folder, red just like her cheeks, and fanning her face before opening it to reveal some photographs, “you want me to believe that these pictures are the demonstration that you are an artist?”

She holds maliciously for the whole class to see the photos that Louis submitted as draft for the photography project exhibition due to the end of this term. A half-dozen shoots he took a couple of weeks ago at the pier, looking like the classic first work of a freshman. He sure had no intention of submitting them as his final project, but he thought he could temporise while he came up with a better idea.

He winces, and suddenly goes pale. “How did you get them?”

Honestly, what is wrong with her, humiliating him in front of the whole class like this.

It’s not like he is a slacker or he doesn’t put effort in the things he does. It’s the exact opposite, if anything. He really cares too much about his works, he procrastinates in order to find a better idea, and then an idea better than the better one, and then he just surrenders and messes up and submits the first half-assed thing, because if he can’t have things his way then it is pointless even trying at all.

“Well, Mr. Tomlinson, I’m glad you asked. Mr. Moyes is too busy this term to coordinate the exhibition for the end of the year and revise all your projects, so he asked me to take care of it, which I gladly will. And if this is what you have to show, I can guarantee you that you will not get a place in it, nor a good mark.”

Louis blushes deeply at that, ashamed in front of his coursemates, and he can’t do anything but bend his head and stay silent for the rest of the class, bearing with the annoying and smug voice of the teacher harping on about things she can’t appreciate, while his stomach burns with embarrassment.

At the sound of the bell he fetches his backpack and dashes off, trying to fight his way to the door and not meet the eyes of his fellow classmates. He bolts through the hallways, and finally reaches his locker.

He tries to downplay that little voice in his mind that wants to put him down, that tells him he’s not enough, never enough. He knows that if he enters again that loop of doubting himself he will only spiral into a depressing phase where the only thing he wants to do is crawl under the duvet and hope he’ll die under there. He can't have that.

He doesn’t want to allow that woman to spoil this chance for him. The university exhibition is actually a great opportunity, there are always big personalities in the industry visiting and there is a scholarship for every category and it’s a fucking big deal that he definitely can’t mess up. He almost wants to do it out of spite now, show her what he is able to do. He’s moved by a new angry heat, which is not exactly the best push but at least it's something, and he wants to go home and ponder the whole night on the idea he needs.

As he thinks so, he hears the flap of the locker next to his bang shut to reveal a disgruntled and scruffy dark-haired boy.

“I’m so fucking late for sculpture. They’ll make me pay for it, I’m sure.”

“Good morning to you too, Zayn. Where the hell have you been? Why weren’t you in art history?”

Zayn is struggling with the strap of his bag as at the same time he tries to balance the stack of books in his arms.

“I went in the studio early this morning to try and work a bit on that damn sculpture and I didn’t realise it was time for class. Will you pass me your notes? Fuck, help me with this, I can’t,” he says, pacey. A couple of folders fall from the stack and the strap of the bag slips around his hips until falling to the floor.

Louis laughs but gets closer and stretches his arms in invitation. Zayn bends a bit and lets half of the books he was carrying slide into his arms.

“Uhm. So?” he asks cautiously, walking on Zayn’s side to the classroom.

Zayn smiles, and his tired and dark eyes lighten systematically. “You know, I don’t want to jinx it, but I think it might be my best work, so far. I hope I can finish it in time for the exhibition, God knows how much that scholarship would come in handy for my master degree.”

Louis would probably give him a pat on the back or even a hug, didn’t he have an armful of books, so he resorts to smile back. Zayn is even worse than him in being autocritical and hearing him being so confident about his work is definitely a pleasant surprise.

“What about you Lou? Did you make any progress with your shoot?”

At that Louis cringes, the smile crooking his lips faltering. He had almost forgotten about the whole scene in class, but the worry assaults him again as he tells Zayn about Mrs. Pearce and what a pain in the neck this photoshoot is becoming.

“I mean, I know I went too far--”

“To put it lightly,” smirks Zayn, turning in the Sculpture wing of the building.

“Yeah, but she literally humiliated me in front of the whole class. And I still haven’t got an iota of idea that might turn into a good project. Maybe I should just go back to the pier and try to take some better shots. Or maybe I should just give up already and not submit anything.”

Zayn suddenly comes to a halt and Louis actually walks for a couple more meters before realising he’s not by his side anymore. He hates it, when people stop with no reason at all while you are walking and talking to them. It’s like one of his foibles, but he finds it an act of rhetorical theatricality in the conversation, without counting the fact that he’s left there standing like an idiot and talking to himself.

“But Louis! You know how important this showcase is! I mean, there will be all these artists and journalists…”

Louis sighs. “I know that perfectly.”

It is exactly because of this that he thought about not submitting. He’d rather not be a part of the exhibition than do it with mediocre work which he would be ashamed of.

They finally reach Zayn’s class and Louis carefully puts the books on Zayn’s desk while his friend fetches some tools from his bag before looking at him thoughtfully.

“I was thinking...what about the shots you sent me yesterday via email? I just skimmed them this morning but I thought they were really cool, you know. What about like...a concept shoot? Something like, really mystical, I don’t know. I think you could work on that idea.”

Louis stares at him for a second, considering his words. He kind of liked them too, even if they were carrying some sort of sadness.

But Zayn’s right, he could. At least it’s something to start from.

“Yeah, I could.”

 

 

*

 

Louis unlocks the door of his pied-à-terre, which is falling in semi-darkness as the sun is on its way to set. He throws his shoulder bag on the small sofa and turns his laptop on, but leaves the lights off, because he prefers waiting for the full night to envelop the room and watch the shadows turn from yellowy tones to blues, to complete blackness.

He connects his camera to the laptop and as he waits for all the pictures to load he puts on the kettle for some tea and then starts to valiantly tidy up the mess he has left the flat in, result of a week in which he barely had time to come home to sleep.

He makes himself a cuppa and sits in front of the computer, going through the few pictures he took during the day; a couple to Zayn’s unfinished sculpture, three taken from the window of Moyes’ classroom, nothing special, really, nothing that could actually be the subject of such an important project, the most important of his degree.

Then he goes back and opens the folder with the pictures he took the day before. The ones in the yard of the university, some others in the narrow lanes of the town. He quickly goes through the ones taken in the flower shop, too, the ones he sent to Zayn.

The fleur-de-lis. _Click_. The trail of petals on the mahogany parquet. _Click_. The droplets of water on the surface of the leaves. _Click_. The lady with the wide eyes.

He lingers on that photograph for some moments, hands intertwined under his chin, in contemplation, then he closes his eyes and sighs.

He thinks and then thinks again, he recollects her agitation, her restless expression that troubled him the whole night, her hoarse voice, a call for help, or at least that is what Louis thought it was, that he couldn’t fulfill.

_Click._

The picture of the boy sweeping the leaves from the floor occupies the screen of his laptop. And Louis cannot not think back of his odd behaviour. Why did he ignore him? Why did he ignore the woman’s malaise? Why didn’t he care about looking for that Margaret?

He follows the traits of his face, the corrugated forehead, the curve of his lips, pursed into a weird harshness, as if in doing so he could find the answer to his doubts, some explanation, some unusual detail that all of a sudden would allow him to put all the pieces together.

He feels like his head is going to explode, and he diverts his eyes from the screen to let them glance around the room. He spots the bunch of flowers that he put the day before in a vase on the windowsill without even freeing them from the newspaper and with no water whatsoever.

He thinks about Harry’s words, and about his smile. With a curt movement he slams the screen of his laptop shut, takes the vase and fills it with water almost to the hem, then he places the fleur-de-lis in it, feeling a bit stupid.

Louis has a little darkroom in his flat. It’s in the bathroom, precisely, since the room doesn’t have a window, and he has to fight with lamps and the enlarger and the containers and the chemicals every single morning when he is late and he just wants to brush his teeth, but it’s worth the hassle, because at least he can develop his pictures in peace. He spent a whole week building it, two summers ago, after breaking up with his boyfriend at the time and deciding to DIY his way through healing his broken heart.

Sometimes he buries himself in there for hours, developing his photographs and losing himself in the process, freeing his mind from his thoughts. He couldn’t decide among the ones he took in the flower shop, so he develops them all. He puts the film in the developing tank and prepares the developer, mixing it with some warm water to get it to the right temperature.

He pours it very carefully into the tank, to cover all the film and closes the lid, and waits.

He measures the temperature of the chemical, an acid stop bath, to make sure they are a couple of degrees cooler than the developer and then adds it into the tank, and waits.

After adding a fixer with studied movements, he prepares the trays to wash his film. It’s his favourite process and he does it meticulously, inverting the film constantly and changing the water repeatedly. He adds a little wetting agent, to make sure the water doesn’t leave weird shades on his pictures, although sometimes at the beginning he forgot to do so and the result was quite fascinating, a bit retro.

He hangs them up one by one on the wire running across the bathtub, admiring the effect in the red dim light of the room. 

They’re sad and dusty and from another epoque, and they’re beautiful. They’re good. They’re really, _really_ good.

Zayn was right.

 

*

 

Louis finds himself in the square right in front of the university, intent in considering two streets, unsure on which one he took two days ago. He is pretty sure he won’t remember how to get there, given his sense of direction is that bad, but he needs to give it a try.

He goes for the one on the right, wanders for several hundred of meters and suddenly he recognises a staircase that ends up in a street full of little shops. He skims past the signs to look for the dusty and wooden one, and-- it’s there. Oddly and luckily, it’s there.

The shutter is half-closed, though.

Louis bends a bit to peek on the other side and then without second thought he gets on his knees and crawls into the shop, lightened by the sunshines that filter from the window on the back only.

“Didn’t you see the shutter?” a half-amused-half-annoyed voice soon calls.

Harry is standing on a stepladder in front of one of the shelves, fumbling with some vases, and casts Louis, who is still hands and knees on the floor, a disapproving scowl.

Louis stands up embarrassed, clapping his hands to shake off the dust, and looks behind with a shrug.

“It was half-open.”

Harry climbs down the ladder, reaches the counter, takes another vase of flowers and goes back on the ladder to place it on the shelf.

“Oh, sure,” he deadpans, “I suppose it depends on points of view and all that, yeah?” he says with a grin.

“Yeah, I suppose.”

Louis gets close cautiously, lifts his head up and meets Harry’s eyes, sizing him up from the last step of the ladder. They don’t say anything for some moments, and the air feels it and becomes hotter and pulsating, or maybe it’s just in Louis’ ears.

“Pass me that vase. The one with the white flowers, yes,” says Harry all of a sudden.

Louis places his camera on the counter and takes the vase instead, passing it carefully to Harry. It’s a vase of white small compound umbels of flowers with bipinnate leaves.

“What flower is this?” he asks.

“Angelica. You just put it in a bouquet to add some green and volume. It’s cheap.” Harry places the vase on the shelf before snapping a small flower from the bunch and handing it to Louis.

Louis takes it and smells it, scrunching his nose. It smells weird.

“And what does it mean?” he asks inquiringly. Harry is evidently taken aback by his question.

“Didn’t take you for the type to care about flower language. It’s a bit of a sappy thing.”

“I like every kind of language,” counters Louis with defensiveness, “especially if it’s a universal one.”

And then he wonders what Harry meant with that ‘didn’t take you for the type’ and for what type he had taken him instead, and in general why had he been thinking of him and what type he makes.

“Pass me the last vase,” cuts off Harry bluntly after studying Louis for a moment.

Louis does so and then he is left to glance around, and notice that after all the floor had been thoroughly cleaned, that all the shelves and the small tables were neat and tidied up. All the leaves and the bushes weren’t there anymore and so was the old lady, although her rocking chair was still in the corner.

“Where’s the woman from the other day?” he asks instinctively.

His mum kept telling him, he will likely die of curiosity.

Harry just scowls at him for the umpteenth time. He hops off the ladder and then folds it and stores it behind the door he entered the first time Louis saw him.

“Do you always ask all these question to a person?”

Louis snorts, offended, as he watches the other boy fix the apron on his hips and go back behind the counter.

“And you, do you never give answers to a person?”

Harry gives him a seemingly harmless smile. “It depends.”

“It depends on what?”

“On the person,” he says smugly, only to disappear in the back of the shop, leaving Louis a bit gobsmacked at his nerve, still, in the almost completely dark room.

“Ever so funny. You know, if you wanted to make this place presentable maybe you should have started with the sign and the window. It surely doesn’t make people want to enter, it’s so shoddy and sad,” he says then mostly out of spite, turning his tone of voice on so it will be heard even from the back. And in fact Harry reappears immediately, poking his head out of the door.

“Is it so? But you entered after all,” he says, with the same infuriating smile plastered on his stupid lips, “twice,” he observes, widening his eyes.

Louis stays silent but blushes and retrieves his camera, holding it to his chest like a shield.

“Alright, what do you want from me? And don’t say a _branch_ of angelica, please,” says Harry then, hands on his hips in await, tapping one foot on the floor.

Louis rolls with the cutting remark without lowering his eyes, staring back at Harry firmly.

He decides to be honest and just ask, because this is the only opportunity he has, the only good idea, and time is passing and the exhibition is close.

“I want to do a photo shoot. Here, in your shop.”

Harry squares him up surprised, as if that was the last thing he expected to hear.

“It’s for an exhibition at uni, I’m doing this project. And I looked at some pictures I took here and they were pretty cool, so I thought...I promise I won’t disturb you or the plants or the--, “ he gesticulates around, “the customers. If you have any. And the best works of the exhibition get some money so I can give you a part of it. If I win,” he hurries, before Harry can say anything.

Harry throws one hand in his curly hair and pulls a thoughtful expression, pondering for a moment on Louis’ rambling words. His features soften when he’s focused like that, and Louis can’t really avoid noticing how pretty the cut of his jawbone is, how bright his eyes are, how lovely his face is.

Staring back at him shamelessly, Louis tries to ignore the guilty feeling that with his request he is someway bursting into this little bubble of a world that Harry seems to have created for himself.

And the guilty part is, that he really wants to burst into it.

“But,” drawls Harry slowly in the end, “I don’t really know if you are actually good enough to win, do I?”

“I can show y-- “ Louis goes to say, but Harry shushes him holding out his hand.

“I think I should have like, some kind of assurance,” he says.

Louis stares blankly at him.

“Wow, okay. Maybe I can-- I don’t know, give you some money to stay here? But I promise you, I won’t need anything. It’s just the flowers and this place, and the lights, it won’t take much, and the exhibition is in a month’s time anyway.”

“But I don’t want your money. I think you can…” he disappears in the back of the shop again, coming back shortly after with a bucket full of water and a sponge, that he throws at Louis. “You can help me clean the shop. And you can start with the sign, see as you seem to care so much about it.”

Louis frowns and is left speechless, as Harry disappears once again. He feels a bit used, but he has no alternative.

“Fine,” he mutters to himself. He fetches the ladder and goes outside, starting to work ploddingly on the wood, thinking of Harry and of his odd behaviour and all the odd and unconventional things that surround him and that captivate Louis, and as he scrubs the sign he wishes he could do the same with the boy, unveil what’s underneath the armour that he has made for himself.

He scratches away the rust and the dirt, and slowly the lean surface starts to reveal. The writing with the name of the shop engraved in an elegant cursive leaves Louis in plain confusion.

_Margaret._

Harry is suddenly beside him, as if he were magic, and he is now moving his eyes from Louis to the sign, eyes which are visibly welled up with tears, gripping tightly at Louis’ wrist.

“Inspiration,” he starts, voice husky.

“What?” Louis squints his eyes without understanding.

“Angelica. It means inspiration.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> on tumblr if you want : glowstojevskij
> 
> :)


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